


SNAFU

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Series: NaNo Meets Whumptober [7]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt: Bleeding Out, F/M, There are quite a few mentions of blood therefore, Whumptober Prompt: Bleeding Out, another fic where nothing actually happens but it's also over 3k, guns and shooting are also part of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21575728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: A mission in Turkey goes south, and Jack and Peggy try to ensure Daniel doesn't pay the price for it.
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Daniel Sousa & Jack Thompson, Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa
Series: NaNo Meets Whumptober [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533689
Comments: 23
Kudos: 63





	SNAFU

**Author's Note:**

> Only a few days of NaNo left, and I finally had to break one of my self-created rules. Life simply happened in all sorts of ways, and I was unable to post this fic anywhere close to its day. It also didn't turn out as I wanted it to, probably because I was writing little snippets over days and between everything else that's going on. But its completion must count for something, right? 
> 
> One day I will write a fic with actual plot. Or where something actually happens. One day.

Daniel’s little cough brought Peggy out of her mental checklist and deduction theories and half-coherent cataloguing as she packed up all the material on the table before her. He wasn’t looking at her when she glanced his way, but she _knew_ that cough and so she shifted her gaze back down to the desk, scratched through the papers a bit, and then slid her eyes over to his hands. Surreptitiously, Daniel pointed to Agent Kaya. 

The man and his three Turkish agents were standing at the door, watching the scene but making no move to help. Peggy hadn’t really trusted Kaya since getting to know him better about two months after his employment, but his integration into SHIELD had been necessary, and still was an asset. He was what she thought of as a controlled risk; his slightly shaky ties to US diplomacy and his regard for his own skin always kept him in check. In fact, he pulled back and played the cautious route so often she usually paired him with people like Jack so that Kaya’s hesitance and Jack’s near-absolute disregard for his own safety balanced each other out. Something about him had shifted, though, when they’d touched down for this mission. Admittedly, Peggy had let it slide more than she usually would have, letting herself put it down to the fact that he was the only native Turkish speaker; that he felt useful and important in such a tense situation. They simply hadn’t had the time for anything else, running in hot and quiet as they had.

She was starting to fear it was a major oversight, on her part. Those tended to cost her more than she was ever willing to pay, in surprising areas, and it was already making her stomach knot in frustrated, stubborn anger. She looked down at the intelligence again, sweeping it all up and putting it carefully in a suitcase. Daniel straightened up from where he was packing up more files and loose paper and limped heavily and slightly unsteadily to the door, sitting down on the seat beside it with an obvious wince and rubbing at his leg. It put him between Kaya’s men and their easy escape, his free hand slowly reaching for his weapon.

“Agent Kaya, is there a reason you’re not assisting us with extracting this information?” Peggy demanded, making a show about suddenly coming to the realisation that Kaya was being lazy.

“Our mission was to decode this information here at the base, report in, take what is useful. You’re packing it all up.” Kaya’s accent was usually something odd to place, but he was deliberately throwing the British twist in this time.

Jack, hearing his mocking tone, stopped carefully dismantling what they assumed was a new weapon to watch her as he picked up her tone. “Given the way this mission has gone, it’s too dangerous to spend time at this base. Leviathan may already be on its way here. The best course of action is to get back to the SHIELD safehouse and to decode everything there.” She couldn’t be sure, but she hoped Jack was inching toward his gun, too. “Would you care to help us, please?” She put as much sarcasm on the request as she could, fully acting as his superior in rank and in intelligence, counteracting what belittling he’d tried to do mocking her accent.

Agent Kaya stared at her, deep and unyielding. And then there was a crash that almost made Peggy jump; the result of Jack simply dropping the mostly dismantled weapon so that it scattered into parts all over the floor. Somebody said something in Turkish she was sure wasn’t kind. Jack just calmly stared at Kaya and said, “I’m terribly sorry. Very clumsy of me. Luckily we have all the best science _chaps_ at SHIELD to help us put that back together.”

Kaya looked hard at him, ignoring Peggy snapping his name to get his attention until she took one step forward when she next called him. His gaze on her made her pause; it was calculating in a way that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. At once, Peggy lunged for her weapon, hoping that Jack and Daniel had theirs more at the ready than she did as she saw Kaya go for his gun in the same moment. A shot rang out just as Peggy’s fingers closed over the gun, and for a long moment Peggy couldn’t fathom where it had come from.

Jack noticed first. “Sousa!” he barked, and that one word in _that_ tone was enough to make her feel like she’d inhaled ice water.

The next wave of horror crashed over her very shortly after, as Kaya carefully stepped a little to the side so she could see a gun trained on her husband, a red patch blooming across his shirt, a grimace on his face. Then she stared down the three guns pointed in her and Jack’s directions. They were outnumbered. She swore to never again be in a situation where people she trusted with the things most precious to her were fewer in number than those she thought any lesser of. She swore a lot of things, some internally and some out loud, as Kaya made her and Jack kick over their weapons to him and his men to pocket.

“Daniel,” Peggy said, even as she placed her gun on the ground.

“Fine, fine,” he said back, voice strained.

“You will put it back together now, Carter,” Kaya said, calmly, indicating the supposed weapon and its pieces. “We are leaving with that machine intact. You best hurry before those Leviathan agents arrive,” he said sardonically.

One clipped line in Turkish, and he backed out of the room, leaving his three men behind Peggy started toward Daniel, and one of the guns got pointed her way. “No. Fix.”

“I just want to stop the bleeding, first.” She even dropped to her knees, to Daniel’s grunt of disapproval. “I’ll even... I’ll crawl. I just want to stop the bleeding.”

“No,” the agent repeated. “First fix. Then you help.”

Jack took off his jacket and balled it up. “I’m throwing this to him to use as a bandage,” he said, before doing just that.

Daniel reached for it and began to press it to the wound on his side. He was, luckily, still seated in the chair, but awkwardly, like he’d fallen into it while he’d been half on his way to his feet. His gun lay a little away from him on the floor; he’d probably dropped it when he was shot, and it had skidded. Or one of the men had kicked it away. Too far for Daniel, too far for her and Jack.

“I’m okay, Peg,” Daniel told her, voice tight with pain, as he laboriously bundled up Jack’s jacket again. “It’ll be okay. Just...” He huffed in pain as he pressed Jack’s jacket to the wound, applying as much pressure as he could. There was already too much blood around him. “Just don’t piss them off.”

It was an old joke, threaded through their years together and double knotted around specific, clear memories, but she couldn’t laugh. She turned instead to Jack, who had begun frantically picking up pieces, letting herself feel for one moment – and _only_ one moment – the rush of frustration and blame aimed at Jack for dropping the thing in the first place. Then she tucked it away and returned to more truthful, and hopefully more helpful, thoughts and emotions, dropping down to the floor to sweep up all the bits they could find. They worked hurriedly, sloppily, and didn’t even double check each other’s silently assigned areas as they would have done in any other circumstance. Their frantic speed also hindered their blind attempts to put the device back together; hands bumbling into each other and knocking things awry.

“You _had_ to shoot the one who has the best chance to put this together,” Peggy snapped at the guards after they had to detach a large portion of what they’d build after finding they’d missed a crucial part.

Jack snorted at her. “Listen to that adoring, wifely bias, Marge. I’m _much_ better at this than Sousa is. And I was the first one to get shot dramatically, by the way,” he said, raising his voice so Daniel could hear. “You’re just copying a trend.”

“Not,” Daniel answered almost right away; with just enough of a missed beat for Peggy’s heart to drop further in the silence. “I was first. In the war.”

Peggy appreciated that he was obviously trying for normalcy and calm, but his voice was weak and strained with pain, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning around for the first time to look at him, finally having to face what she hadn’t wanted to see before she had a solution to it. “Daniel. How are you holding up?” 

He couldn’t meet her eyes, and that was what made  the room lurch cold and then hot.  Bad, then. Bad enough  that  he was trying to think of a lie she’d believe,  even though they’d always sworn to be honest with one another while on the job. Peggy whirled  back to the machine  before he’d answered, more frantic than before.  It was more than just a little naive to think they’d let her go and get to a hospital  once she and Jack had fixed their sought-after weapon , but  until she had a better option her hands had to do  _something_ , no matter how futile. 

“Sousa, keep talking,” Jack snapped after another few, tense minutes. 

“Thought... you liked the... sound... of your... own voice.” 

“Oh, sure,” Jack snorted, and there should have been an eyeroll in there. But his eyes were intently focussed on the machine in front of him, hands desperately fast. “You don’t _ever_ let me get a word in. Not since your brats have started actually being able to do things other than poop and grin.” 

The reminder of the kids was as pointed as anything Jack had ever said; razor sharp and determined in order to force Daniel to keep fighting, but it just served Peggy as another weight of guilt around her shoulders and in her stomach. Daniel wasn’t supposed to even be out there with them. He enjoyed what others saw as a career death or even punishment, quietly making the desk job his even while Peggy was first pregnant. He’d transformed that department, slowly and covertly, and while they trusted each other to speak about regrets and could-have-beens, he rarely returned home with anything except satisfaction sewn into the corner of his smiles, no matter how tired they were. But she’d cajoled him into joining her for this mission, because it had been a difficult one from the brief and she’d felt like she needed his personality and his expertise and his excellence. His presence beside her, the way everything else in her existence rotated. It was pride at best to place the blame for his decision squarely on her own shoulders, but Peggy couldn’t help but imagine him safe at home if not for her intervention. 

There was n o  sarcastic comeback  to Jack’s small dig,  and she glanced at  Daniel in  fresh fear. He was paper white already, visibly struggling  to keep his eyes open and place his hand against the jacket that wasn’t hiding the spreading bloodstain. “Hold tighter on that wound. Daniel!” she snapped, and he complied as much as he could. 

After that, the tense moments that blurred together ran on in silence except for the occasional soft curse or the clatter of the machine she and Jack were trying to build blind. The thud made Peggy tense and Jack jump, and they both turned to find Daniel had collapsed off the chair. 

“Daniel. Daniel, _sit up_. Look at me. _Daniel.”_

There was no sign of an exit wound on his now-exposed back, her mind supplied helpfully.  Had the bullet struck bone? Or gotten lodged in an internal organ? If he was bleeding internally as well; if the amount of blood he’d lost externally was just the half of their real worries... The thrill of fear was almost paralysing. The man with the gun trained on Daniel nudged him with his foot a few times, and then gave a good, hard kick for good measure. 

“Hey!” Jack snapped, ignoring that he also had a weapon trained on him. “Son of a _bitch_.” 

The agent kicked at Daniel again and got no response, and both Peggy and Jack took a step forward. “Please,” Peggy said, turning the words she wanted to say into more helpful ones. “Just let me attend to him. Just for a moment. And then I’ll carry on working.” 

The agent assigned to her waved his gun at her in a vaguely threatening way . “Fix it.” When she stared back, fury and worry blended into one, he sighed a little. “Better to lose father than mother, yes? For kids.” 

The implication made her heart chill and her blood boil. Jack’s  sudden  grip on her  jacket was  the only thing that held her back. “If we fix this, they’ll let us help him,” he said, and there was no conviction in his voice. Just desperation. “Stop kicking him, though,” Jack snapped at t hem, and  _that_ was finally what nearly pushed Peggy from determined Director Carter to worried friend and wife; how childish and meaningless Jack’s demand came across without him meaning it to. 

Peggy had barely turned back to work before Jack subtly nudged her. When she looked over, he showed her the hilt of a throwing knife tucked into a hidden pocket just under the waistband of his pants. Why he hadn’t brought it to her attention earlier puzzled her slightly – but then, she wasn’t quite sure what one knife would do against three guns, after all. It took a while, but she managed to slip it from him without anybody noticing and without compromising Jack’s honour. Later, when everything was okay, she’d tease him about knowing to give her the knife at once, since she was better at throwing the knives he carried as an extra, unorthodox weapon, she promised herself. 

Hiding the knife in her sleeve,  Peggy purposefully dropped a piece  of the weapon  so  that she could check the men’s positions, and saw with a leap of hope that Daniel’s gun was not where it had been on the floor. Instead,  she found when she peered carefully closer,  it was in his hand. Clever man. 

“I think this is the third last part,” she told Jack, loudly, and he looked at her funny but didn’t say anything. “And then it should definitely be a barn snap. So that’s three... two.... one...” 

She whirled and threw the knife at the man marking Daniel, just as Daniel rolled over, much slower and with a moan of pain he couldn’t mask, to shoot  a little sloppily at the agent who had been marking Jack .  The final agent whirled automatically to the sound of the gunshot, gun rounding on Daniel, and both Peggy and Jack charged him, only barely managing to make his shot miss Daniel as they drove him from his feet. The scuffle was unsophisticated and confused; limbs and hands and a mix of reaching for the gun and simply trying to cause bodily harm. Peggy was sure she kicked Jack a few times, and definitely got accidentally bruised by him more than once. Eventually, however, Jack managed to hold the agent down while Peggy cut off his airflow. As soon as the Turkish man was unconscious they snapped into  unspoken delegation; Jack went to check  on the other agents to ensure that they wouldn’t suddenly wake up and prove to be nuisances, and Peggy fumbled her way to Daniel’s side. 

He was breathing harshly and trembling, arms splayed out around him, grip around the gun almost non-existent, but still had strength enough to groan when she pressed Jack’s jacket back against the wound. She didn’t need to peel anything back; there was enough blood on him and the floor for the deduction that it was bad to be an easy one to make.

“Daniel,” she said, and then ran out of words.

“’m fightin’,” he slurred back at her. “Get... us a way out...”

It burned against every instinct to leave him, especially when he was starting to shiver, but she knew he was right. Still, she lingered with her fingers brushing small circles on his writst as Jack tore up his shirt into strips for a better bandage. “Literally taking the shirt from my back, Sousa.”

“’errible... shirt... ‘nyway.”

It was too little, too late, but they patched Daniel up as best they could, anyway, and then she and Jack grabbed their weapons and those from the fallen agents and her split up, down the corridor, Daniel’s blood on their hands and fronts. It was almost comical how quickly Peggy found an office with a working phone and it took only a moment of calculating the risks before she rang their emergency number. As she gave the code to the place that answered like a Turkish ice-cream parlour, muffled shots rang out and lodged anger and worry into her spine. She hung up without waiting to hear anything from the voice on the other end and sprinted back toward the room that held Daniel and the half-finished supposed weapon. She forced herself to slow as she neared the door, so that she could approach stealthily and with a steady gun raised. When she peered around the door to see a blood-soaked spot on the floor but no Daniel, Peggy nearly gave away her position by making a sound. And then, knee-wobbling relief; Daniel was still in the room, quite a ways forward, slumped over and with a bloody trail across the floor as his wake. And then, the relief shattered and was swallowed because she couldn’t tell if her husband was breathing or not.

A more careful sweep of the room found it clear; clear of waiting men, clear of unconscious or dead agents, clear of the weapon and the boxes of Leviathan intelligence. It was a horrible blow – a waste of resources, a failure to keep something potentially very dangerous contained, a lack of more information about the organisation’s next moves – but if those were the only things that Peggy lost that day she would still be more than grateful when she finally allowed herself to rest. With a thudding heart she forced herself to go over and check Daniel’s vitals. He was still alive, but fading fast, and she wished that she’d stayed on the phone long enough to receive an ETA.

Jack came skidding into the room, looking more than a little worse for wear. “They’re gone,” he said, shortly. “Left some guys behind to take care of us.”

“Where are _they_?” 

Jack shrugged awkwardly around a shoulder that looked like it hurt. “Taken care of.” He slumped to the floor on Daniel’s other side, eyes flickering over Daniel’s form and hand _almost_ reaching out to touch. “Now what?”

“We wait,” she replied, softly, one hand keeping pressure on Daniel’s wound and the other holding his hand, hoping it wasn’t another bad call.

***

“Blood out of my damn body,” Jack complained, loudly, in-between mouths of jello. “ _You_ never gave me any of your blood when _I_ was shot.” 

“Jack, get your feet off the bed,” Peggy snapped at him, but her swat was half-hearted with relief and exhaustion, and he ignored her and continued to eat Daniel’s jello. 

Daniel groaned, and the mood in the room darkened at once. Jack put his feet down, half rising to rush to get a nurse. Peggy’s hand went to his forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“I have Jack,” Daniel said, slurring very slightly. “Inside my veins. That’s _disgusting_.” 

Peggy sighed and Jack collapsed back into his chair, once again propping his feet up on the bed. “Finally have  good breeding, now,” he said, cheerfully. 

Peggy  eyed him and  reminded herself that they’d been very lucky Jack was Daniel’s blood type and, for once, hadn’t lost  enough blood so that he was able to donate. Although... he’d insisted he was no longer anaemic; that he’d fully recovered from his own shooting years before. But he looked awfully pale to her admittedly tired and itching , eyes.  And he was carefully not reacting to the scrutiny she was giving him.  She resolved to keep a  sharp watch on him, too. 

“Pity there’s not more jello,” Jack said, as he finished the dish. “Or, you know, Leviathan documents and a secret weapon. But at least we have most of Sousa back, right?” 

Inexplicably, Daniel grinned a little, shaky but genuine, instead of trying to fire off a retort. “Peg, is my leg here?” 

“Right under the bed, why?” 

“Look inside, please. Right down at the toes.” 

Bemused, Peggy did what he asked,  sticking her arm down the prosthetic and feeling into the hollow foot area. Her hand came back clutching a number of important-looking component s  of the  possible weapon  she and Jack had been putting back together. 

“Daniel,” she laughed, delighted, and Jack cracked up, too. 

“Maybe you should be out in the field more often, you Grandstander.”

“Absolutely not,” Peggy retorted at once. “After we get back home, the most dangerous place he’s going is the grocery store on sale day.” 

“Gotta smack out the other moms for that prime armoured heifer,” Jack teased, and Daniel grinned lazily back, obviously very pleased with himself. “Now hurry up and get well enough to fly so we can get back outa this turkey sandwich and back home.” 

“You know that’s not,” Peggy started, then thought better of it. “Never mind.” Daniel sniggered very slightly, careful not to pull on his wound. 

There was the progress on Kaya’s location to follow up on. Their flights home. The paperwork over the whole fiasco. Checking in with the Jarvises about their kids. Scaring the agents posted at the hospital room door into loyalty and excellence. But, for a moment, Peggy watched Jack try to rub a jello stain out of his borrowed shirt with his spit, frowning comically, while Daniel began to doze with his hand trapped in hers, soft Turkish music in the background. And, with a little effort, she let all those components start to build her aquittal for all the mistakes she’d made. 


End file.
